pudge's Journal: Saturday Night Live's In-Kind Contributions to Obama

Three weeks into its new season, Saturday Night Live has had two sketches attacking McCain and two attacking Palin, and not a single sketch attacking Obama or Biden.

Obama's only shown up in one sketch, in a spoof of the first debate, in which McCain was portrayed as an unhinged nut and Obama as a serious politician. There were two token jokes thrown out about Obama -- one about Chicago corruption and another about playing the race card -- but the rest of the eight-minute sketch was poking at McCain. There were almost as many jokes about Hillary Clinton, who showed up at the end of the sketch, as about Obama.

I remember the good old days when SNL would attack all sides, and not pick sides. Sketches like the spoof of the three-way debate between Bush, Clinton, and Perot (with Dana Carvey playing both Bush and Perot) were the reason why people tuned in each week: to see funny parodies, not lame attack ads against one party's candidates.

These are not those days for SNL. It's too bad that just when they get a cast that is really putting out some good stuff, after several years in the wilderness, that they are undermining their own bread-and-butter: political spoofs.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

social responsibility

[Bill Dog]

Comedy for the purpose of getting just laughs is fine, but how much nobler a pursuit is it to use comedy to push for the betterment of things. Unfortunately, what I define as corruption, and you also evidently do not like, they think of as virtue.

Re:

[pudge]

Comedy for the purpose of getting just laughs is fine, but how much nobler a pursuit is it to use comedy to push for the betterment of things. Unfortunately, what I define as corruption, and you also evidently do not like, they think of as virtue.

I guess. I don't know what their motives are. I just wish they would be funnier, and funnier on all sides. Instead it's Obama as the straight man to McCain. Boring and lame.

Re:

[FroMan]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,423126,00.html [foxnews.com]

Somehow I don't have many questions about their intentions.

Cast is improved, writers worse

[multimed]

That's about the long & the short of it, the writers just aren't up to snuff. Though tough to say when they last were excepting Weekend Update. Ideally they'd be making fun of both sides evenly - God knows there's no shortage of material provided by both. But absent not being even & balanced about it, if they were picking on the Republicans more but were actually really funny, I'd be willing to give them a pass. The other thing that is telling was that didn't have much time to prepare for the debate

Re:

[pudge]

I am not even sure if I care about it being "even." But they are avoiding even trying to cast Obama in what might possibly be a negative light, because they want him to win.

Re:

[multimed]

Just re-watched it actually - I did get a kick out of the playing the race card on Kim Jong-il bit. That was fairly funny & well acted. Fred Armisen's Obama is actually pretty good - they just don't give him enough funny lines. Darrell Hammond's McCain on the other hand, really is not very good. He does a fine Bill Clinton (though truthfully, the degree of difficulty there is very low because of Clinton's personality), but his McCain is hard to watch.

What drives me up a wall...

[FortKnox]

... is that they are attacking Palin's inexperience, but haven't ONCE pointed out Obama's.

In fact, I find it quite ironic the Dems keep poking at Palin's inexperience...

Obama's from Chicago

[mcgrew]

Like, nice TV station ya got dere, be a shame if sumpin wus ta happen to it. Like, youse don't wanna mess wit Obama!